


Double-Edged Mirage

by AliceinHyruleBastion



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Attempted Rape, Heavy Violence, I want to emphasize that it was only ATTEMPTED rape, M/M, Swearing, You don't deserve this, but I had a morbidly fun time writing it??, but still not pretty, dear god I'm so sorry Ryuuji, general mind-fuckery, lemme know if I'm missing anything!, oh yeah: the attempted rape is off screen, this is one of the darkest things i've written, though there are descriptions of it later via Ryuuji, touch-starved (?), we only see the aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 13:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11037216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceinHyruleBastion/pseuds/AliceinHyruleBastion
Summary: The heart has its dark sides nestled within the light, and in the world of the Metaverse, those very strings can very well be your unraveling.The Thieves get split up on a floor of Mementos, and they finally regroup-only to realize Ryuuji is missing.And all hell breaks loose.





	Double-Edged Mirage

**Author's Note:**

> Hello hello, I'm back with another P5 upload!
> 
> As I said in the tags, this is not something to be taken lightly; if heavy blood, graphic wounds and violence, swearing, hospitals, off-screen attempted rape, etc bother you, PLEASE don't read this!!
> 
> Anyway, this was the first fic I wrote for these kiddos, so I hope I got them right! (I had only been up to Makoto when I wrote this so yeah)  
> (Another important note: I have no personal experience with rape trauma, as the best I can relate to is emotional trauma, so I apologize profusely if I have made an error or some careless mistake!)
> 
> Comments and critiques are highly appreciated, and I hope to be back soon with some MUCH lighter Yusuke/Akira soon!  
> Sorry for the long note, y'all. I hope you enjoy!

The minute they'd gotten to this floor in Mementos, he'd had a bad feeling.   
  
Now, after everyone had been separated with all contact between them severed, Akira realizes his gut had been right.   
  
Eventually, he'd been able to meet up with most of the others, finding them relatively easily in rooms nearby with a mysterious lack of Shadows. However, there was still one person missing: Ryuuji.    
  
There'd been no sign, rhyme, or reason for why Mementos had split them up or why it was devoid of Shadows; absolutely nothing. The only hint they'd gotten was the sound of a faint rattling laugh, followed by something that made Akira's stomach drop:    
  
_ "This domain belongs to the demons of mirrors, us siblings, and we play with our food until it  _ **_breaks_ ** _."  _ _  
_   
Morgana had no answer to anybody's questions, and only vaguely remembered something familiar about those "demons of mirrors", but that revelation has done nothing to quell Akira's fears.    
No, they needed to find Ryuuji, and fast.    
  
They'd scoured and hunted and searched high and low with panic ratcheting higher (though from the situation or Mementos itself they weren't certain) as they'd fruitlessly made their way through before accidentally running into a tucked-away corner just near the entrance of the floor.    
  
Something dark and uncomfortable had crept under Akira's skin when they'd reached the entrance, which had cracked open to reveal sickly-looking stairs downward pulsing like a bloody heartbeat.    
  
There was something dangerous that lurked under the ground beneath them and they could feel it, but they had no choice-   
Family  _ is _ family after all, despite the teasing and quips and arguments.    
  
And so, they  hesitantly made their way down the stairs (Akira's fingers absently trailed the walls as if searching for solace in their strange rhythms) until they reached a room that could best be described as a massive catacomb: stretching from floor to ceiling were elegant arches of human bones gleaming sinisterly high above them (Akira had heard Yusuke's breathe catch as they laid eyes on the architecture, and he could understand the gruesome beauty of it), and black and cracked tiles of something undefinable splintered across the floor in a jigsaw of crushed pieces, making the floor choppy and uneven. The room was dark and harsh on the eyes, and a bitter smell of something like burnt hair and flesh but  _ not _ permeated the entirety of the room; It looked as if Death itself had even abandoned the place.    
  
However, the most important part of it?   
In the middle of the room was Ryuuji himself, heels of his hands pressed tightly into his eyes as if trying to hide from something, his mouth muttering something silent to himself that the others couldn't hear.   
  
At a closer glance, Akira froze when he realized that Ryuuji's mask was gone, and that other parts were also amiss: the shoulder seam on his left arm had been torn open from shoulder to wrist, and one of his belts has been sliced apart and hung loose, bullets missing from their slots. His red scarf looked as if it had been yanked out and untied, and the front of his suit was torn and harshly ripped open. Bruises so dark they could be seen from Akira's distance mottled the sides of his neck along with what looked like thumb marks pressed just above his larynx and collar bones, and his hair was mussed as if he'd run his hands through it in violent frustration.   
  
_ Had he fought something?  _ _  
_ __ _ No- maybe? The damage looks different somehow. _ _  
_ __ Akira's thoughts were pinwheeling over themselves as he tried to take in everything.   
  
"Something doesn't seem right," he said quietly instead, keeping an eye on him.   
  
"We should still try approaching him, but cautiously," Morgana said.   
  
With a quick nod to rest of the group, they all spread out, though Akira carefully stepped forward, tensed for battle should the need arise. "Skull?" he said, barely raising his voice as if too terrified to break the ringing silence of the room.    
  
No response, though Ryuuji spread his fingers and harshly dug the tips of them into his scalp.    
  
_ This has to be a trap. _ _  
_ _  
_ __ "Skull," he tried again, "can you hear me?"    
  
Again, no response.    
  
Unease settled in the pit of Akira's stomach like rotting lead.    
  
Holding up his hand, he signaled for everyone to stop moving as just he carefully crept closer, feeling some of his anxiety dissipate as the familiar cold of a blade slipped into his hand.    
  
If worse comes to worst, they may have no other choice but to fight.   
Akira didn't want to resort that.   
  
About a few feet from his friend, he stopped, and tried calling his name again to no avail. His Third Eye didn't help, and if anything his presence nearing Ryuuji only aggravated him. (Akira could see bloodstains in his hair, and he winced.)    
  
Twice more he tried his name, until he frustratedly called a sharp " _ Ryuuji _ "-

And Ryuuji flinched as if he'd been  _ burned _ .   
  


Startled at the reaction, Akira had taken a step back before Ryuuji dropped his hands from his face, eyes going wide at the sight of the people before him.    
(With a jolt, Akira could see a sharp gash splitting the corner of his lip and dried blood staining his lips and face, and wicked scratches and dark bruises stood out like a exclamation mark against his light skin.)    
  
"Get  _ away _ from me," he said, not a yell nor a scream, but a  _ plea _ \- defeated.   
  
"Skull, are you alright?" Ann yelled from Akira's left, but Ryuuji seemed to not hear her words.   
  
His only focus was on Akira now, face pulled wide in fear as he inched away from him, shrinking and trying to hide himself.   
  
"Are you alright?" Akira asked, but the words  backfired as Ryuuji flinched again.    
  
As if those words were a pre-trigger, like the safety of a gun being flipped off, something in Ryuuji changed, and his hands tightened into bone-white fists at his side. "Just leave me the  _ hell _ alone," he said defeatedly, eyes shut tightly and face turned away.   
  
"What do you mean?" Akira asked carefully,  freezing as he watched Ryuuji's personalities flip- Like a cocked gun, -no, a loose cannon, unsteady and unpredictable, like a bomb with no fuse.   
  
"You know  _ damn _ well what I mean," he spat, words splintering between rage and tears, "now piss off!" (His angry words seemed like a dummy, a bright defense that held no real bite behind it)

 

Confused and worried beyond a word better suited, Akira cautiously stepped toward him again. "Ryu-"   
  
"I said  _ fuck off! _ " He screamed, and faster than he could track, Akira found himself two inches away from the muzzle of a shotgun, and his hands flew up in instinctive surrender.   
Akira could hear gasps and the sound of weapons being drawn from behind him, but he waved a hand to stop them.    
  
"You've played around with me enough already," Ryuuji hissed lowly, though his voice wavered; he was on the verge of tears, Akira realized. "I'm done with your sick game!"   
  
"What are you-?" Akira tried to ask, but he was cut off by a sharp " _ Don't _ ".   
  
Akira's spine went rigid, and he could feel his heartbeat screaming.   
  


" _ Don't _ do that, don't try and play dumb, as if you didn't do those  _ things _ to me, and-and tried to-" the dam broke, and Ryuuji's voice cracked as tears carved tracks through the dirt and blood caked on his face, his grip on the gun wavering. "You can't just waltz around wearing his face, saying things like that and treating me like some sick  _ toy _ ." His voice was shaking and raw with tears and desperation and something else so much deeper that Akira couldn't identify, and he felt the air vanish from his lungs.   
_ What _ ?   
  
("Mona, do you know what he means, 'wearing his face'?" Yusuke asked quietly behind him.   
  
"I'm not certain, but..." Morgana trailed off.   
  
"But what?"    
  
"I have a bad feeling I may know what's happening.")   
  
"There's nobody here, Skull, it's just me and the rest of the Thieves," Akira said calmly, smoothly, and he saw a falter before something steely twisted Ryuuji's features. The gun went back to between Akira's eyes.   
  
"Don't you fucking  _ dare _ do that again, sayin' shit like that as if you're him," he said viciously, "if you say one more word I swear to  _ god _ I will blow your fuckin' head to pieces."   
  
Something clicked, both in Akira's mind as well as Morgana's.   
  
_ He thinks I'm someone else. But why? _ _  
_ _  
_ __ “Joker, there must be a Mirror Shade around here! Morgana suddenly yelled. "They manipulate people by taking the form of inner desires, and I think he sees  _ you _ !"   
  
Ice settles in Akira's heart, and for one stupid instance he turns just a millisecond away with a confused "What?"-   
And Ryuuji snatches him by the front of his coat, one hand in the fabric and with the other pressing the muzzle harshly into Akira's forehead, and Akira's mind  _ screams _ .   
  
"I said don't  _ fucking talk! _ " Ryuuji  yells, and Akira watches as his fingers start to twitch and squeeze at the trigger.    
  
_ NO NO NO NO NO _ _  
_   
But, with a pin drop-pinprick sound like falling water, the room freezes as a figure settles itself next to Ryuuji, leaning affectionately on his shoulder. "Oopsie daisy," it says, voice saccharine and venomous. "It seems you've got the wrong one."   
  
Ryuuji, at hearing the voice, had frozen as well, eyes blowing wide as he slowly turns his head to the face next to him.    
  
The figure, hazy and indecipherable, waved its fingers at him. "Now, look what you did, Ryuuji," it coos, voice slurring the line between admonishment and excitement.    
  
"No," he whispers, head shopping back around as he looked around. His breath hitches when his eyes land on the rest of the party, as if finally realizing they were in the room, and another strangled " _ no _ " slipped from his mouth as they landed on Akira, Akira's face, the one pulled tight in horror and fear-stained realization because of  _ him- _   
_ What he'd almost done. _ _  
_   
Akira watched as the gun slipped from his fingers and he stumbled back, tripping and falling backward as he tried to get away from  what he saw. The expression on his face was one that Akira could not name, and scraped at his ribs in rusted fish hooks.   
  
"What did you do?" Ryuuji said quietly, words near-silent like glass seconds away from shattering. " _ What did you make me do?! _ "   
  
The figure tsk'd at his words, and came up behind him, wrapping its arms around his neck. He flinched, trying to shove them away, but his eyes never left Akira's face. "I didn't do anything, dear. No, no that was  _ alllll _ you, and your funny little heart," it sang into his ear, before leaning in to slowly lick the shell of his ear. A flush of revulsion burnt in Akira's chest.   
  
Ryuuji shuddered and shoved it off of him. "Leave me alone," he said, words exhausted and defeated, and he propped his elbows on his knees and pressed his face into his hands. The thing just latched itself onto him again, purring and whispering sweet-nothings into his ear.    
  
Akira slowly raised a subtle hand just by his right, in sight where he knew Morgana could see, and gestured for him to slowly move up, while motioning with his other hand for the others to stay still but ready.   
  
As Morgana slunk up to his side, he whispered a near-silent "What's happening?" to him.    
  
"It's called a Mirror Shade, as I said before," he explained quietly, "they're children of Izanami, who possess her ability to take the form of one's inner unconscious desires, either sexual, romantic, platonic, or familial. They elicit certain strains of fear until they soak the Amygdala and eat it." Morgana shivered. "However, they can only control one person at a time, so that's why  _ we _ aren't being affected."   
  
"Are they what the message we heard earlier was talking about?" Akira asked, eyes still carefully watching the Shade try and coerce a response from the shut-down Ryuuji.   
  
"Must be." He paused. "Do you have a plan of attack?"    
  
Akira subtly shook his head. "I don't think we can really move, aside from you, without getting its attention," he said, "it's best that we-"   
  
He was cut off by a sharp squeal, and saw Ryuuji pulling back bloody fingers from the Shade's eye with something- was that a  _ bullet _ ?- between them.    
  
"You  _ bastard _ !" It hissed, its elongated fingers clamped over its injured eye.    
  
Ryuuji tried to scuttle backwards, but the  _ thing  _ was too quick, and in one sharp movement almost lovingly pulled his head aside before sinking its jaws into his neck, rasping and latching on with what looked like rows of horrible, gruesome teeth like a lamprey. With a choked scream, Ryuuji tried to claw at the Shade as something burrowed up the skin of his neck toward his temple, and a sharp " _ No _ !" slipped from Akira's mouth as everyone snapped into action, guns clicking and clamoring shouts and threats blending into each other.   
  
Before anyone could act, however, the Shade retracted its teeth from Ryuuji's neck, and he slumped lifelessly into its lap. With a cruel grin, it licked its lips. "It seems I've upset you," it chimed, "so what are you gonna do about it?"   
  
One hand raised, sharply clenching into a fist: Hold Up.    
  
As footsteps ran toward the Shade, it only smiled and locked eyes directly with Akira as it stood. "Oh come on, you don't possibly think you can attack me-"   
  
Akira raised his pistol toward its blurred face just as it started to sharpen and focus-   
  
"-when I look like  _ this _ ?"    
  
Akira's breath caught.    
The same tenor voice, same blond hair, same brown eyes-   
The same face as the one lying at his feet.    
  
_ No _ .   
  
An ugly grin twisted through the familiar features as it started to laugh. "See? You can't lay a  _ fin- _ !"   
  
A single gunshot, just below where its heart should be. A yelp as its form went blurry again.    
  
Silently, Akira knelt down by, yanking it up by its filthy hair as he stared it straight in the face, knife pressed into its throat. "Don't  _ even _ think you can try a trick like that when he's lying right by your feet," he snarled.   
  
The Shade- still with Ryuuji's stolen features, only blurred and still  _ wrong- _ must've seen something in Akira's face, as it dropped the playful façade and started to plead and writhe away, hands clawing at Akira's grip. "Please,  _ please _ , we were just hungry! Please don't kill me, it was just a bit of fun!"   
  
Akira didn't say anything as he sharply pulled the knife across its throat.   
  
Black blood spilled from its wound until it hit the ground and turned to ash, garbled words and wet breaths reverberating around the walls until it crumbled away into nothingness.   
  
(He was cold fury that burned like a silent flare of frozen iron.)   
  
A weight, a breath he didn't know he was holding shuddered from his lungs as he stood up, only pausing momentarily before he turned around to see his party staring at him, wide-eyed in pure shock. He opened his mouth to say something, when his attention was diverted by a wet cough.    
  
_ Ryuuji _ .   
  
Akira  quickly dropped next to him, hoisting Ryuuji upright and leaning him back into his own chest so Akira could press a hand to the gaping wound overflowing like a shattered faucet, and he could feel blood soaking into the fabric of his gloves like a cruel irony.   
  
"Do we have any medicine left?" (Yusuke, searching, wary)   
  
"I think the only thing we have left is bandages!" (Ann, panicked, caring)   
  
"Can anyone cast a strong enough Dia?" (Morgana, stoic, certain)   
  
"We should get out of Mementos immediately and get to a hospital; we can't stay here," (Makoto, directive, detached)   
  
(Akira, over-focused, undone.)   
"Mona, get us to the entrance!" He yelled, and with a nod, Morgana activated a Goho-M that pulled them all to the front doors, exhausted.    
  
\---   
  
They barely made it to the hospital, they’d been told.    
  
Two blood transfusions and thirty-seven stitches were needed to close the major wound, not to mention the countless other injuries he'd sustained (a twisted ankle, two fractured fingers and splits nails, and deep bruising around his wrists and ribs, as well as finger-like bruises pressed just above his hips and thighs, his throat, and other smaller circular ones that littered the same areas.)    
  
When they'd been asked what had happened to him, they'd seemed surprised when they'd answered "A dog attack."   
  
Later, one of the nurses had pulled Akira aside and asked quietly if Ryuuji had been abused. He'd immediately shaken his head, but the nurse gently placed a hand on his shoulder, and calmly asked if he knew of any  _ sexual _ abuse he could've been subjected to. Again, Akira had shaken his head, though his face must've betrayed some sense of something pity-worthy.   
  
Once she'd left, Akira had braced the wall behind him as he ran through the list of injuries again, mind running a mile a minute as he tried to process her words.   
  
_ Sexual abuse? _ _  
_ __ _ Is that what he meant when....?  _ _  
_ __ _ No, no that can't be right.  _ _  
_ _  
_ __ His thoughts were interrupted by a soft "Are you alright?" from Ann, who'd just walked up to him after rounding the corner. He nodded, standing back upright.   
  
"Oh, well, Ryuuji's up now, and we can go in and see him," she said soberly. Akira only nodded at her words, and they both walked in silence to his room.    
  
Reaching the doorway, he stepped in, cringing when he saw the stark white of the room contrasting with the sickly dark wires and the off-white gauze and the bruises littering Ryuuji's skin.   
  
"We'll leave you two alone, okay?" Ann said quietly, and left the room.    
  
With a deep breath, Akira walked to side of the bed, sitting on the unoccupied area by Ryuuji's legs, the motion of it alerting him- and made him flinch.    
  
"Woah, it's just me," Akira said, and saw something uneasy slip into Ryuuji's eyes.   
  
"Ah, sorry, I just-" he groaned as he tried to sit up, and failed, flopping back down in frustration. "It's nothing," he eventually muttered.   
  
Akira noted the odd shift in personality ( _ too quiet _ ,  _ too still, too cautious _ ) but didn't say anything of it. Instead, he asked "How are you feeling?"   
  
Ryuuji snorted at that. "Honestly? Like shit. Havin' a huge-ass chunk of your neck ripped out really sucks, though whatever meds they gave me  _ rocks _ ," he croaked, making a face at the sound of his voice, and Akira laughed despite himself.   
  
After that, however, the small blip of Ryuuji's normal self disappeared again as the silence stretched, turning stale and awkward-   
The elephant in the room grew into a mammoth, a beast that sat on both their chests.   
  
Akira risked it.    
  
"Ryuuji-" (another flinch) "what happened in there?"   
  
A hitch of breath. Eyes shifted guiltily away. "Nothin' you need to worry about," he answered gruffly. (A herring bone meant to feed the starving dogs of Akira's questioning)   
  
Akira raised an eyebrow. "Your wounds beg to differ."   
  
"Well, I mean, you kinda saw what happened, so..." he aimlessly gestured at the stiff gauze on his neck.   
  
Akira shook his head. "That's not what I meant."   
  
Ryuuji sighed, sharp and low, eyes shutting. "That Shadow just got a little... rough, okay?" He tried, but again, it fell flat.   
  
"What happened after we were separated?" Akira led.   
  
Ryuuji frustratedly flapped a hand before letting fall back to the sheets. "I wandered around a bit, it found me, chased me for a bit, and then it-" a hitch of breath- "well, you know the rest. Somehow I ended up in that room, and there ya go."   
  
Akira stared at him, stared at the blatant lie painted in streaks across his face. "Ryuuji." The word wasn't a question, nor a command, but a bullet loaded into a chamber. Better to get it over with, like a mercy killing- be as blunt as the victim himself.  "I was talking to the nurse who treated you, and she asked me if you'd been abused-"   
  
"We said it was just dogs!"   
  
" _ Sexually _ abused, Ryuuji. She was ready to call the police."    
  
Ryuuji's face froze before draining completely, breath going stilted and pupils shrinking to pinpricks. One hand fisted in his sheets.   
A truth so loud it shattered the silence despite its absent words.   
  
A cold dread flooded Akira's veins, chased by a fire-whisky rage that burned under his skin.    
_ That damn bastard's lucky it's already dead. _ _  
_   
"Ryuuji, what happened?" Akira asked again, the same words now a crevasse beneath them.   
  
A second too long of a silence before his response. "Nothi-"   
  
" _ Don't _ give me that," Akira said sharply, and Ryuuji jumped at the edge so uncommon in his shy friend. "I've seen your wounds, I  _ saw _ how you reacted around that Shadow, I was  _ there _ ," he said, voice turned pleading, " _ please _ don't try and tell me that nothing happened."   
  
Ryuuji's chest hitched at the words, and Akira could hear the beat of the heart monitor climb, high and monotonous. Contemplation crawled into his face, pained and sharp, and Akira waited- he wouldn't force it; he didn't need to- until he spoke. "It- it did something weird, did something with its voice, changed it, I don't fuckin' know, and I thought that... it was you, so I followed it until it just jumped me." A pause, eyes still not meeting Akira's. "For a second I thought I saw this ugly thing, some blurry corpse-zombie thing, but then somehow it changed into you and I thought I'd been hallucinatin', so I started asking it about the others, where they went, what happened, what was goin' on but then it just... started talking, and it was like I couldn't stop-"   
  
"Couldn't stop?"   
  
"-somethin' was making my legs move, making my hands move, my body, I couldn't control it- and it gave me this look that was just so  _ wrong _ , sayin' things that- that just weren't right and I think that's when I realized what it was, that it was a Shadow, but even after that I couldn't get away and..." he trailed off, voice raw, almost on the verge of frustrated tears.   
  
"What happened?" Akira tried, trying to be delicate, trying not to shatter him, but-   
  
"It tried to fucking  _ touch _ me,  _ did _ touch me, doin' things I didn't want and-and- it tried to undress me, saying stupid shit like what it wanted to do to me, pinning me to the ground, and I couldn't move, and it almost..." Ryuuji broke off with a wave of tears, curling his hands into fists before wincing sharply at the two fingers he had bandaged, forgetting they were fractured. "I eventually got in a hit to the face and bolted, but then I got stuck in that room, and the rest's history," he finished bitterly pressing his hands into his eyes, trying to erase the tears.    
  
Akira had frozen, a mishmash of emotions turning his mind to sludge.    
_ Oh, Ryuuji. _ _  
_   
He opened his mouth to say something, of which he wasn't certain he'd say, when a gasp of an "I'm sorry" interrupted him.    
  
Confused, he turned to see Ryuuji harshly pulling at his hair, eyes shut tight and body shaking. "I'm sorry that I wasn't strong enough to get it off of me, I'm sorry I was so weak, and I-   
  
"Ryuuji, Ryuuji  _ stop _ ," Akira said, "why are you apologizing? You didn't do anything wrong."    
  
"I almost shot you in the fucking  _ head _ !" Ryuuji yelled, and Akira jumped. "I couldn't even tell that you were the real one, and I almost fucking killed you! What do you mean I didn't do anything wrong?"   
  
"Ryu-"   
  
"Don't. Please, just don't," he said quietly, louder than any yell could have been. A rattling breath, like the breath of a corpse. "I fucking flinch when I hear you say my name, and I can't stand you touching me." The words settled under Akira's ribs like ice, cold and sinuous. "I'm terrified of you even though I  _ know _ you didn't do anything."    
  
Akira's mouth opened, closed. A beat of uncomfortable silence.    
  
"Can you... can you please let go of me?" The words were small, so wrong coming from his mouth. Akira looked down to see his hand had jumped to Ryuuji's leg in an attempt at comfort at some point or another, and he sharply retracted it.    
  
"Sorry."   
  
A violent shake of the head. "Don't be. Just... I need some space. Okay?"    
  
Akira nodded slowly, heart tearing itself apart at the motion, wanting nothing more than to say "No you idiot, I'm not leaving-" but he couldn't.    
  
"I'll let the others come in now," Akira said quietly, before carefully slipping off the bed and out of the room, where the others were waiting just outside.    
  
_ Shit. They must've heard- _ _  
_   
"Is he alright?" Yusuke asked, either oblivious to what he'd heard or just being polite. (Akira presumed the latter.)   
  
"He's fine. You can go in and see him," he answered.  "I'll wait out here."   
  
A few glances both to him and to each other, but blissfully no words as they headed in, and Akira could hear cheery greetings (only half-faked, the other half out of relief) and low words, but his mind was buzzing with the recent conversation.   
_ He can't touch me.  _ _  
_ __ _ That damn thing messed with his head.  _ _  
_ __ _ What do I do? _ _  
_ _  
_ __ Leaning back against the wall, he let his eyes slip shut as he focused on the buzz of the ambient sounds around him.   
  
The answer?   
He did nothing, no matter how much it pained him to. 

  
(The thought of why the Shade had shifted into Ryuuji hadn't ever crossed his mind until Morgana was explaining it to Ryuuji a few days later, and after mentioning its mimicking of inner desires, Ryuuji had done something extremely odd:   
He'd  _ blushed _ .   
  
Red burned in his cheeks and turned the tips of his ears cherry.    
  
Akira had been confused at the response, but it'd sparked something- a realization- why had the Shade been able to use Ryuuji's face?    
  
_ Shit _ .)   
  
\---   
  
It took two months-   
_ Two months _ \- For it to happen, two months of forced gaps and spacing, of avoiding his name entirely, of not the slightest contact, of  _ wrongness _ , before it happened, and it was in battle.    
  
It had been a grueling day in the Palace, and Akira had been low on health just like everyone else when a Shadow had charged him. He'd been unfocused and unprepared, and had only heard a yell of "Joker, watch out!" from Morgana before a form had jumped in front of him, arms flung out and back pressed against Akira's chest-  _ taking the blow for him.  _ _  
_   
It would've been a decent hit, but the Shadow was already on its last legs before Yusuke's spell froze it and it shattered.    
  
Akira had been knocked to the ground by the blow, but Ryuuji'd barely moved, dropping his arms with a wince before turning around, giving him a lopsided grin. "C'mon Joker, let's get you up," he'd said, reaching down and hoisting him up, fingers right around his wrist without a visible recoil of any kind.    
  
After yelling to get to the nearest Safe room, Akira had lagged for a minute with a perplexed stare at Ryuuji before he remembered to move, and once they'd shut the door of the Safe Room the others gave him a similar response, gaping at him.   
  
Confused, he looked back and forth between them. "What?"   
  
"You just..." Ann had started.   
  
"You not only took a blow for Joker, but you..." Makoto had added, but Ryuuji had still been confused.   
  
"What, what did I do?"   
  
"You  _ touched _ me," Akira had said from behind him, and Ryuuji had jumped at the sudden sound of his voice.   
  
Ryuuji had turned to face him. "Huh?"   
  
"Just now, you just grabbed my arm to pull me up," he'd said.   
  
Ryuuji'd tilted his head at him, still not getting it.    
  
Sighing, Akira had stripped off his glove, shoved it in his pocket, and then reached out to place his bare hand against Ryuuji's face.   
  
Though his eyebrows had narrowed sharply at the motion, he hadn't moved away, nor flinch- no, nothing like that.    
  
"You're letting me touch you again," Akira had said quietly, and at the words, Ryuuji's eyes had flicked down to the hand on his face and blanched, jerking it away- but out of  _ embarrassment _ , not guilt.   
  
_ Normal _ .   
  
"I, uh-"    
  
Akira had only broken into a massive smile and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug, earning a laugh from the others at the help Ryuuji had let out at the sudden action before reciprocating.    
  
"Okay, okay, fine, I guess I'm okay- well,  _ better _ now," he'd said, and Akira's smile had wavered as his eyes automatically traced the lines of the jagged scars that traced down the side of Ryuuji's neck, the scar just above his lip and at the corner of his eye, marks that had only worsened the rumors about him. (The nightmares he still sometimes had, the few times he slept over, ones he said he never remembered in the morning but his face said otherwise)   
  
It was progress.    
Not an end, but  _ progress- _   
  
"Yeah, I guess you're right."

 

(It only took a few minutes to put the pieces together after that, and only a few days later to couple that with the whole Shade-desire-mimicking thing and start the teasing. And yet, it was all so normal and  _ happy  _ that Akira couldn't even try to feel annoyed at the jabs he kept getting at the smallest touches.)

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops.  
> At least I didn't kill anyone, right?
> 
> As my sister said while editing this, "why are you so mean to the ones you love??"


End file.
